


The merman and the human

by Tabata



Series: Leoverse [77]
Category: Glee
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-02
Updated: 2016-03-02
Packaged: 2018-05-24 09:40:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6149410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tabata/pseuds/Tabata
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam needs pieces of wood to build a raft and leave the rock. Every day, Cody collects them for him.  And as the days go by, this routine becomes a way to know each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The merman and the human

**Author's Note:**

> **WARNING:** This story is an AU from the original 'verse. What happens in here has little to none correlation with what happens in Leonard Karofsky-Hummel VS The world or Broken Heart Syndrome. The characters involved are (mostly) the same, but situations and relationships between them may be completely different.  
>  Good evening and welcome to YET another new instance of the universe! XD In this one, there are mermaids. Or, well, mermen, actually. You started to know Adam in [Adam and the Merman](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6142390), now it's time to know Cody.

As he tries to explain Adam the place he comes from, Cody realizes that it's way harder than he thought it would be. The only world Adam has ever known is the one he lives in. Unlike Cody, who can peek at the nearby towns from the shore, Adam has never set eyes on what lies in the depth of the sea. His mind is not able to visualize the images Cody is trying to convey to him, despite how hard he tries.

“So, you don't have houses?” Adam asks, as he puts the new pieces of wood Cody brought him to dry against the wall of the cave. They were easy to find once he followed the current to the place where all kind of things run ashore in this time of the year. He knows the currents very well, because that's how he finds the most precious pieces for his collection.

“Of course we do!” Cody chuckles, beating his tail on the water's surface to splash Adam. “Just not like yours. I've seen them, and they're nothing like ours. We don't have roofs or proper walls or proper little houses either.”

“I don't think I follow,” Adam shakes his head.

It's been four days already since his shipwreck. Cody comes visit every day around noon. Adam is usually busy planning how to build the raft that will take him out of this big rock in the middle of the sea and towards home, when Cody's head pops out from the little pool inside the cave he's passing his days in. Adam had thought he was going to get used to his weird beauty and the fact that he is, indeed, a real-life merman, but it doesn't work like that with sea creatures. Adam finds him scarier and yet more intriguing the more he looks at him, and that despite the fact that Cody has never come out of the water again since the first day – apparently he likes this big rock and spending time with him, but the ground not so much. Adam think it's because he doesn't move really well out of the water.

“It's more like a series of caves like this one,” Cody continues, swimming around in his puddle to follow him as Adam moves around. “One cave next to the other and on top of each other, going down, deeper and deeper towards the bottom of the ocean. Each cave has an opening on the front so you can come and go.” He tries to draw in the dirt with his wet finger the complex of living quarters he knows best because his friends live in it. “In every cave lives a family.”

Except for Cody's family. He, Leo and Blaine live in the palace, which is the biggest and only isolate formation of rock in that part of the sea. It's also the only one that was shaped into something else rather than just a natural rock. It's chiseled like a piece of art, rocks sculptured into towers, bastions and battlements – even though, of course, Cody doesn't have a name for all those things. He only knows that the palace he lives in looks more like something human would make, because he saw what the fishermen call _the king's castle_ in the distance and it's got the same characteristics. And it makes sense, really, that Blaine lives in a king's castle because he's the king of the merfolk.

But Cody can't say any of this to Adam, not yet anyway. Revealing such precise details could be dangerous, and there's some decency left in him, as Leo would surely say, so that he doesn't want to tell Adam all their business right away. In fact, he wants to know him better first, and see if he can trust him. He doesn't know exactly what will happen then, when he will tell him everything, he hasn't thought that far yet. For now, Adam is just a peculiar creature – as much as Cody must be for him – and he wants to hang out with him and see him move around on those ridiculous two... feet, he guesses that's the word.

“And all these caves are made of coral, right?” Adam asks again.

Cody blinks a couple of times. “No, they aren't,” he says, a little puzzled. “They are made of rock, like this cave.”

“My father used to tell me stories about your people every night. He said the merfolk lived in a vast city under the sea, where the houses were made of coral and the streets were paved with shiny shells, and gardens of colorful seaweeds decorated every corner. He would tell me other stories too, about sea monsters and witches, but he would admit they were just stories. This one, tho, about the merfolk, he would act like he had been there, like he had seen those things with his own eyes.”

Cody can feel the disappointment in Adam's voice. He's been hanging on his fathers' words since the day the man died at sea, and now that he has a living, breathing merman in front of his eyes – something he wasn't even sure he would find someday to begin with – he's nothing like he's supposed to be and he's telling him that everything he knew is wrong. Now, Cody can't really lie to him and say he was joking, that everything in the place he lives in is made of coral, down to the last pebble in the streets. That wouldn't be nice, would it? But he can give him hope, somehow. “Our city is not like that,” he says, crossing his arms on the ground and resting his chin on them. “But there are other cities, and maybe those cities are exactly as your father told you.”

“Are there others?” Adam blinks.

“Hundreds of them, like the cities of the humans,” Cody chuckles. “We're talking about a lot of different seas, here.”

“Seven, right?”

“For now,” Cody chuckles, his tail swinging right and left. “Seas are born and die as any other creature, and the currents are their moods. That's what my mom always says.”

Adam smiles at him, but his eyes linger on Cody a little too long and his alien features become suddenly upsetting. It's as if Adam couldn't see his real face right away and the truth of him revealed itself the more he looks at him. He clears his throat and looks down, breaking the spell. “Say, where did you find this?”

Adam grabs one of the pieces of wood from the place against the wall where they're drying, and he shows it to him. Every day, when he comes to visit, Cody brings him all the wood he can find, in hope of helping him build a raft on which he will finally be able to leave the big rock he's currently living on. They're usually random broken planks, branches or some other things so old that Adam can't even say what they were before. But this one, this is peculiar. It's a 40” long plank, blackened and ruined by the sea water, and there are letters carved on the right end of it. 

Cody looks at it closely, tilting his head to the side. “Just around,” he says, honestly. “Do you like it?”

He is quite proud of that plank, because it's very long – so it must be very useful in the building of a raft – and because he managed to sneak it past Leo's ever-watching eyes. It was in the shipwreck pit, some old trench where wreckage of ships always end up after the ships sunk. They also call it the _Ships' Graveyard_. It's a fascinating place, but quite scary. He and Leo used to dare each other to go deeper and deeper into the trench and bring back stuff to prove it. Leo would always win because he's fearless. Thoughtless, Blaine says. He always scolds Leo because he lives like nothing bad could ever happen to him, which of course means that he's not careful enough, and yet this is part of what makes him so very attractive to Cody.

Anyway, Leo is also very jealous – of both him and Blaine – and he's starting to wonder where Cody goes every day without him. He started asking questions and Cody has to say all kind of stuff to avoid lying to him. In fact, this morning he said that he wanted to spend some time in a pool of water without Leo around. Leo and his prying hands, to be specific. And when Leo frowned, feeling rejected as he always does, Cody added that he was going to be back with a surprise for him. Technically, he didn't lie. He is in a pool without Leo. He just has to find a present for him, now. 

“Do you know what this is?” Adam asks, showing him the letters carved on the plank.

These must be human words, but he doesn't know what they say. “No,” he shakes his head. “Sometimes they are written on pieces of wood, but they are not always the same.”

Adam seems suddenly interested. “Did you see something like this somewhere else?” He asks. Cody nods. “Where?”

Cody shrugs. He disappears under the water for a moment, and then he comes out spitting. In the beginning, Adam thought he was playing, but he came to understand that Cody does that because after a while his skin gets too dry. “Somewhere,” he answers. “On other pieces of woods in the past. Does it mean it's not good for your raft?”

“No, no,” Adam says, as he passes his fingers over the letters. “I just think this is a name. The name of a ship, I mean.”

Cody shrugs again, he doesn't see what this has to do with anything. Adam notices how clueless he looks about his questions and decides not to push him. If this is part of the name of a ship, as he thinks it is, then maybe the ship from which the plank is coming from is still somewhere to be found. And with it, a possible shipment. His father might have been wrong about the merfolk and their cities, but he can still be right about a treasure. Besides, he doesn't know Cody well enough to be sure that he's not playing dumb about the ships. He looks at him and finds him smiling, and for a very long moment – that lasts until it's time for Cody to go and his tail disappears underwater with a splash – it's really, really hard not to believe he's sincere.


End file.
